Any way to copy .iso to hard drive and install from there?
 

Burner is broken.

To rip the file to an ISO, I think you just need to take a binary dump of the file:
Alternatively, programs like cdparanoia may help if you are having trouble reading the disk.

You can mount the disk like so:
The loop option tells mount to mount from a file rather than a regular device, and ro will make sure it's mounted read-only.

Change /media/ to wherever you want the cd files to go, and change user to the name of your user.

Hope that helps,

—Robert J Lee

depends
 

that depends are you trying to install software onto you linux system or are you tring to install linux from your hard drive. if it's the first then you can do what rjlee suggested if not yes there is a way let me know if its the second option you are looking for

I think he wants to install the iso to his hard drive and then use that to install Linux. I'm not sure that can even be done without turning the iso into a partition, installing grub, and then booting from that partition. Maybe one of the boot loader gurus can help. ? You might want to search on "booting isolinux". There just might be something under that.

To install Linux from a hard drive may be possible; it depends which distribution you are trying to install. If you have another computer around and some sort of LAN (maybe just a crossover cable), then you may find it easier to do a network install, with the files on one machine on a web server, and installing the other machine. Unfortunately, instructions for network installs vary between distributions as well.

If you have a computer pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows and just want to install Linux on it, then one option to avoid the CD installer is WUBI (http://wubi-installer.org/). This installs the current version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution from a Microsoft Windows system, and doesn't require you to even have an ISO — but it only works with Ubuntu Linux. Instructions and download link at http://wubi-installer.org/

I have 60 gigs free on an NTSF partition (not sure how that got botched). I am interested in installing a new distro that will work best with LMMS (source? install missing at least one important plug-in). Not enough space leftover on my Ubuntu partition to break it up. I got the impression that Gentoo would accommodate everything best for LMMS. Finding the plug-in(s) is probably just the best solution. It's not a job, it's an adventure.

I got to thinking about it and realized the awkwardness of the process but it sounds like it should be doable.

Looks like the answer to this is Sidux.

Some distributions like Debian allow you to install a small initrd + kernel + *.iso, set the HD as bootable, and off you go. What I do is create a 2GB partition for the initrd, kernel, and iso, then after installing I recover the 2GB to use for swap.

Alternatively, you can partition the HD (2GB is still a good number), copy the contents of the *.iso, and install a bootloader to start up the installer. The *.iso image comes with isolinux, but this is not suitable for booting from a HD. I use lilo for this purpose because I can set it up quicker than 'grub' and there are no config files to copy to the HD.

To mount the iso so that you can copy its contents:
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -t iso9660 /path/to/iso/file/something.iso /mnt/iso -o loop

Aren't their linux installers that work from within windows? not that I have ever used one...

Oh well, since Ubuntu is their, I guess creating a new partison big enough for the uncompressed image and then using DD to uncompress it might work, if your using grub just point grun to it, might work, but I really dunno... sounds interesting either way.

Hard drive install
 

does you computer support booting from usb because the easier way to install a distro without a cd is using fedora's live usb cd creator that can be used to create a bootable image on a usb drive from an iso the best way to do that is to find a net install image. but if you really want to install from an iso on you hard drive you need to get a hold of grub bootloader either for usb or floppy. then you would have to repartition your harddrive with one of the programs that RESIZE you harddrive not one that will erase you current os. then remeber that partition number and format it(just that partion). next you need to open the iso and copy out the folder(usually called syslinux or isolinux) containing vmlinuz and initrd.img and copy that to your new partition then you iso to that same partition. now create you grub disk or usb(there are a lot of tutorials on google that tell you how) and open that disk and look for menu.lst open it with a text editor and and add an entry

title=What ever you want to call it (hdX,Y)
root (hdX,Y)
kernel /the folder you copied earlier/the full name of the vmlinuz kernel
initrd=/the folder you copied earlier/the full name of the initrd.img

where X is you harddrive number and Y is your partition number, remember that harddrive 1 partiton 1 would be (hd0,0)

then when you get setup to boot remember you you partition number and run setup from harddrive and select that partion, when you get the option to create the harddrive format do custom and delete all partion except th one containing you iso and create a / mount point and swap and any other mount point you want remeber you can have olny four primary including you iso partition which you can delete after the install now follow the rest of the install as normal

hope this helped ask if i didn't explain something well enough.

you can find a grub image for floppy by searching for pendrive linux grub boot floppy

Folks, take a look at the GRUB setup on a LiveCD. Note the UFC option, etc. I haven't tried it, but that might work if GRUB were pointed to an ISO image on a disk.

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